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Final Brexit deal ‘to be tested on mice’

Brexit Secretary David Davis has confirmed that the final terms of Britain’s exit from the EU will be trialled on mice under laboratory conditions before being rolled out across the country. The move has been broadly welcomed by MPs and business leaders who have expressed concerns about the effect an untested settlement could have on the UK economy.

‘The boffins are working on a serum which can be injected directly into mice which will replicate the effects of Brexit’ says Davis. ‘I don’t claim to understand it but I’m confident that the mice will flourish and become more outward-looking and make new friends with other mice from all over the world’.

However, Dr Fenton Barnes of Cambridge University, who will be leading the project, does not share the Brexit Secretary’s optimism.

‘We’re at the very early stages of the project’ says Barnes. ‘But when we injected a small dose of a serum engineered to replicate the effects of leaving the single market and restricting freedom of movement the mice became very listless and withdrawn. They only became animated when we put a photograph of Michael Gove in the cage, at which point they got very angry and defecated on his face’.

Meanwhile animal rights groups have expressed concern about the potential cruelty of the testing methods.

‘Unfortunately there isn’t really any other way of doing it’ says Barnes. ‘Although some senior Tory MPs did ask if we could carry out the tests on other life forms that might be less controversial, like micro-bacteria or the Scots’.

The trial is expected to run for 12 months after the final deal has been agreed.

‘We’d like it to be longer’ says Barnes. ‘But our EU funding runs out in 2020 and we’re screwed after that’.